Two Poems:
citron (rejection as a lemon)
&
poem for tumblr user vanshistuff

by jp thorn

​Fissured Tongue Series Vol VII  |  May 2026

“Fidelity," Radoslav Rochallyi. Acrylic and oil on canvas, 210 x 220 cm, 2025

citron (rejection as a lemon)
​

apologies, but  today i expire.  examine my ribcage & you
                  will
find a bruise resembling a date, proof  within  inspection,
                  remains
taken  up  space  &  soon  will  be  replaced  fresh  yellow,
                  green
or earthy, morse-coded  human  beings  hardly  desirable
                  especially
when  lacking  a key,  compass, guide, ledger  or table  of
                  content

you’ll   look   me  over,  then   overlook  me   for   another
                  reminder
of   youth;   fish   fry  not  synonymous  with   sacrifice  or
                  atonement
before,  i  wasn’t  ready: i  prepared  by marinating in the
                  awaits
of  declaration  to  begin  again  still  stumbling  &  i  pang
                  from
wanting to  be  chosen,  hoping  famish  could  find  family
                  within
your  hands,  your nostrils,  in the  slaloms of your  mouth
​_______________________________________________________________________________________
​

                                                                                                          bite the lemon tenderly |
                                                                         each tooth  peony |
                                                                   acid & enamel squeal |

                                 bite the lemon growing bitter
                 erosion creates a new home
​
| pointless being soft
| stealing stones from parthenon

poem for tumblr user vanshistuff
​

at least once a day you should read a poem that slices you clean in half. & then you go to the post office or something to maintain your sense of tedium. a lukewarm drive will be silently narrated by things you can’t shake: viscosity of melted skin, woman holding limp child, tesla trucks, tiktok girl who went viral for hating tesla trucks & tbh her rage is not misplaced. they’re ugly as melted skin, akin to a trail of bodies or mass graves. luckily the post office is only five minutes away, intrusive eels recede while you get into character, become the anonymous blues clues postman. walking back to the car is wider without my mother. resentful towards time i begin each morning with a broadside guillotine & move as a continuous shot, one take, all action

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About the Author 
jp thorn is a queer, neurodivergent artist raised in & returned to the bible belt. advocate for destigmatization & radically open communication, their work is inspired by humanness, adoption, reframing traditionalism, therapeutic processes, unlearning patriarchy, identity, & global patterns. they’re also a Pushcart Prize & Best of the Net nominee. you can find more of their work at www.thorn.jp.
​

About the Work
​"citron (rejection as a lemon)"
this piece started to form in my head after a quick run to the grocery for produce. the process of looking over fruit & vegetables & choosing the most desirable to take home began to intersect with chronic loneliness, isolation & ideas of idolatry. i wanted to write from a perspective of dejection & how it was experienced through a queer, crip lens.

"poem for tumblr user vanshistuff"
as someone obsessed with the intersection of poetry & memetics i was immediately moved to write this piece after coming across an edit randomly on social media. the digital age, despite its consequences, has created endless language & ongoing conversations across its landscape, something i love to be playful with when creating even when writing about more subdued subjects, such as grief, global patterns, or identity.
​

About the Process
My writing process is often pushed into reality by the subconscious. a lot of my work begins as free-writes or a solitary line that feels purposeful. i am constantly inspired by patterns & ways of communicating ideologies through syntax, soundwork, form, diction & other literary devices. growing up as a queer, neurodivergent person in the south continually informs my work & i love taking experience, no matter the context, & shaping that into something palpable.

***

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About the Artist
Radoslav Rochallyi is a contemporary artist working across visual art, mathematical poetry, and conceptual language. He uses operators, equations, and vectors as compositional tools to build rule-bound works where constraints define the field and an invariant preserves identity over time. He is developing TORQ!, an axiomatic framework that approaches artworks as coherent measurement systems, alongside M.O.R.I.T.Φ, a practical method for describing material, operations, limits, invariants, time, and mapping. He holds an M.A. in Philosophy and a Ph.D., and completed a Certificate in Painting at Pratt Institute, New York. He is based in Břeclav, Czech Republic.

""Fidelity" explores the erosion of certainty in systems designed for precision. Beneath the vibrant abstraction lies a partially erased equation that was once calculable is now fractured. In my work, I dissect the tension between formal systems and expressive intuition. My hope is to suggest that even the most exacting formulas dissolve under pressure, emotion, and time."